Meteorites Fall Into Young Hands

A Special Exhibit At The Lizzadro Museum Of Lapidary Art Features Specimens From The James M. Dupont Collection, One Of World's Largest.

February 21, 1997|By Lynn Van Matre, Tribune Staff Writer.

Taylor Harman peered into the display case at the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in Elmhurst and pronounced the otherworldly contents "spooky." To her classmates Matt Frey and Amanda Larson, it was "cool" that the meteorites inside the case came from outer space.

"We're really lucky to be able to see them," said Karen Miller, as the class of field-tripping 4th graders from Juliette Low School in Arlington Heights got their first glimpse of tiny chunks of the moon and Mars last week. "These are nice rocks."

Twenty-five years ago, the museum scored a coup when it exhibited a 4-ounce moon rock brought back by Apollo 11 astronauts. That two-week display drew some of the biggest crowds in the museum's 35-year history, according to Dorothy Asher, Lizzadro assistant director.

Now another, much larger display of stones and minerals from outer space has taken center stage at the museum, best known for its collection of jade carvings and gems.

The "Meteorites & Moon Rock" exhibit, which continues through April 27, features specimens from the James M. DuPont collection, the 11th-largest meteorite collection in the world and the most extensive private collection of meteorites ever assembled. DuPont, a New Jersey plastics entrepreneur, began collecting meteorites in the 1950s and amassed more than 1,000 before his death in 1991.

In 1995, DuPont's widow, Violetta, donated the collection to the Algonquin-based Planetary Studies Foundation, a non-profit science education organization. The donation was an unprecedented windfall for the small, community-based group, which has 180 members scattered throughout Chicago and suburbs.

"Our goal is to build a planetarium complex in the northwest suburban area to house the collection," said Planetary Studies Foundation president Paul Sipiera, a longtime friend of James M. DuPont.

Until the foundation can establish a permanent home for the meteorites, Sipiera said, the valuable collection is being stored "in a secure place," with portions lent out periodically for exhibits. Nearly 100 of DuPont's meteorites are included in the Lizzadro display, along with a walnut-sized moon rock from the Apollo 17 mission on loan from the Illinois State Museum in Springfield.

Though the mostly dark-grayish chips and chunks of stone and metal may not be as elegant or colorful as other museum displays, they could hold the key to humanity's understanding of the universe, Sipiera said.

"By studying meteorites, we are trying to answer basic questions about how the Earth got here and how life formed," said Sipiera, a geology professor at Harper College in Palatine whose research speciality is meteorites. "Meteorites are the preserved material from the origin of the solar system."

Although meteorites vary as to shape, size and chemical composition, most come from the present-day asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. Meteorites are named for the towns or natural areas where they land and are divided by composition into three main categories: irons, characterized by a pitted surface and the presence of two nickel-iron alloy minerals; stones, which resemble Earth rocks in appearance; and the relatively rare stony-irons, composed of nearly equal amounts of alloy metal and minerals.

Most are believed to be about 4.5 billion years old, with the exception of a small group of meteorites planetary scientists speculate were blasted off the surface of Mars 1.3 billion years ago or less, Sipiera said.

"In 1987, scientists analyzed some gases in these meteorites and found that they matched gases on Mars," said Sipiera, who will present a slide lecture on Mars meteorites March 8 at the Lizzadro Museum. "The only way to prove that they came from Mars is to go there and bring back a piece of the planet, but for the most part the evidence that they originated there is pretty good."

Because of the scarcity of Mars meterorites, Sipiera said, the going price for them is $600 a gram, or $16,800 an ounce--roughly four times the price of gold.

According to Sipiera, the cherry-size Mars rock on display at the Lizzadro Museum is a piece of a much larger meteorite that fell in Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The original chunk of volcanic rock weighed 80 pounds and unfortunately landed on a dog.

"It's the only known incident where a meteorite killed anything," Sipiera said. Scientists have estimated that up to 100,000 tons of material from space plummets into the Earth's atmosphere each year, but most of the pieces are no bigger than a sand grain and burn up long before reaching the ground.

Other highlights in the collection include the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969 and contains microscopic diamonds, and the Allende meteorite, which fell in a small Mexican village the same year. Radioisotope testing has determined that the Allende meteorite contains an aluminum-calcite-titanium mineral that dates back 4.61 billion years.